"Gordon Brown talks about bidding for the World Cup in 2018, but is the idea so attractive if we don't have an England team capable of winning it or even getting out of the group stages? Because that's what I fear will happen."

Wilkinson was the man who revolutionised youth development as the FA's technical director and introduced the Charter for Quality almost a decade ago.

Now he fears the programme has lost its way, neglected in the wake of a rapidly changing and money-obsessed game. Young English talent is being starved of opportunity and could dry up completely.

"The general view is: 'What's it matter? The Premier League is great, we have terrific footballers and managers with money to bring them in from all over.' But I care about the development of domestic players because they are critical to the long-term welfare of our game."

Wilkinson fought against a century of tradition to wrest the power of development from schools and county associations and hand it to professional clubs, with the establishment of academies.

But he fears that too many players are being lost between the ages of 18 and 21. A handful of outstanding youngsters, such as Wayne Rooney, Aaron Lennon and Micah Richards, become first-team regulars at 18, but many more are deprived of opportunities.

Managers are reluctant to put their fate in the hands of a talented but raw teenager, fresh out of the academy.

"One prominent chairman of a Championship club told me he was considering whether it was worth pursuing youth development because he couldn't give them an opportunity," said Wilkinson.

"Promotion to the Premier League is worth up to £50million. It has become a financial imperative and clubs can't see it happening unless they fill their team with experience."

Reserve team football is widely criticised for being disorganised. Squad players go weeks without a game and academy graduates jump at the chance to go out on loan.

Arsenal trio Niklas Bendtner, Sebastian Larsson and Fabrice Muamba have all impressed at Birmingham this season and Arsene Wenger clearly trusts Steve Bruce to take care of them, but Jeremie Aliadiere started only 13 games last season as he was shunted from Celtic to West Ham to Wolves.

Now he's back with Arsenal and playing a starring role in their Cup campaigns, but where are all the English youngsters?

David Fox, 23, son of former Stoke goalkeeper Peter Fox, was ear-marked for big things at Manchester United. He played for England at every level from Under 15 to Under 20 and captained United's reserves but quickly realised that a player had to be exceptional to get a first-team chance.

Now at Blackpool, on an 18-month contract, he said: "I joined United at 16 from school and always believed I could make it but it dawned upon me fairly quickly that it would be difficult.

"The demands for instant success are such that you'd find foreign players or other first-teamers ahead of you. We had better players than Middlesbrough's academy, for example, but we couldn't make any progress because if the club wanted another midfielder they'd go and buy one.

"I had to move on if I was going to have a career."

Tom Kearney, 25, hoped to make the grade as a central midfielder at Everton.

Now at Halifax after a stint with Bradford, he said: "I made lots of sacrifices but found that once you got beyond the academy and made the reserves, the route was blocked by older players or foreigners who needed the games to stay fit. The manager wasn't too keen to give the younger players a chance."

Wilkinson has a radical solution. He wants smaller clubs to be nurseries for bigger ones. If a club like Notts County, where he is a director, were controlled and supported financially by a Premiership club there would be less pressure for results.

The manager could develop players and supporters could watch a team supplemented by the stars of tomorrow.

"Under the right conditions, I'd be happy to see Notts County do this," says Wilkinson. "I wouldn't see it as surrender or loss of identity. I'd look at it as a partnership."

Les Reed, who succeeded Wilkinson at the FA, believes the Charter for Quality failed because the central concept — focus on coaching the individual — was compromised immediately because clubs wanted competitive academy leagues.

Reed said: "If development coaches are not winning matches they will be questioned about their ability. Then you have a youth team based on results like the first team."

More than twice as many academies sprang up than the FA expected, because clubs did not want to miss out. There are now 40 clubs with academy status but, typically of English football, they are monitored by two different bodies.

The Premier League are responsible for standards at the 18 academies run by their clubs and the Football League for the other 22.

Self-preservation deters the monitoring bodies from punishing clubs where facilities are not up to scratch or where the coaches don't have the right qualifications.

English 11-year-olds lack the technical skills of their French, Dutch and Spanish counterparts but the English football authorities spend more time bickering about who should take the responsibility than tackling the problem.

Though youth development is hugely important, plans for the National Football Centre at Burton-upon-Trent were shelved at a time when the Republic of Ireland, Turkey and Latvia were all building centres based on France's celebrated academy at Clairefontaine.

In most countries, youth development is in the hands of the national FA and Brooking admits: "The stakeholders in the game must come to a consensus because England is lagging behind other football nations in technical terms. If we don't act quickly the gap will get bigger."